Leon
Trotsky: GPU Tried to Cover Murder with Slander
June
25, 1940
[Writings
of Leon Trotsky, Vol 12, 1939-1940, New York ²1973, p. 293 f.]
The
body of Bob Sheldon Harte proves in a tragic manner the falsity of
all the calumnies and denunciations leveled against him. The police
authorities, who were obligated not to refuse to take this suspicion
seriously, have revealed exceptional energy in this matter also.
The
GPU is not a simple band of gangsters — it is an international
selection of trained agents with a long background of crimes, armed
with unlimited technical and economic resources. According to the
lowest calculations, the technical preparation alone for the assault
in Mexico, leaving aside bribes and the costs in other countries,
amounted to not less than $10,000.
The
solving of the crimes of the GPU, because of this, presents
tremendous difficulties. In no other country of the world, not in
France, not in Switzerland, not in Spain, have any of the crimes of
the GPU been brought to light with such thoroughness as is being done
before us with this one, the assault of May 24 in Mexico. The body of
Bob Sheldon in all certainty will shed a supplementary light on all
the devices of this complicated conspiracy.
In
two of its announcements, the Central Committee of the "Communist"
Party has repeated that the participation of Sheldon casts a
"suspicious" light on the assault. In reality the
penetration of an agent of Stalin into my household could have
indicated solely that the GPU had succeeded in deceiving my friends
in New York, who recommended Bob Sheldon to me. Every informed person
knows that the GPU floods its agents into all the workers'
organizations and state institutions throughout the world. For this
it spends annually tens of millions of dollars. But the version that
Sheldon was an agent of the GPU is completely crushed. His body is a
convincing argument. Bob perished because he placed himself in the
road of the assassins. He died for the ideas in which he believed.
His memory is spotless.
Qui
prodest?
asks the old and wise maxim of Roman law. Who is interested in
slandering Bob Harte and leading the investigation astray? The answer
is clear: the GPU and its agents. The discovery of the source of the
false declarations in reference to Bob will certainly reveal one of
the staffs in the plot.
Bob
is not the first of those close to me who has fallen at the hands of
the mercenary assassins of Stalin. I leave aside the members of my
family, two daughters and two sons brought to their death by the GPU.
I do not speak of the thousands of my partisans exposed to physical
extermination in the USSR and other countries. I limit myself solely
to my secretaries in various countries who have been led to suicide
by persecution, who have been shot or assassinated by the agents of
the GPU — seven persons: M. Glazman, G. Butov, J. Blumkin, N.
Sermuks, I Poznansky, R. Klement, E. Wolf. In this list Robert (Bob)
Sheldon Harte occupies the eighth, but I fear not the last place.
After
this, the political agents of the GPU can speak of my "persecution
mania."